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Cheating, Rule-Bending Alleged at World Cyber Games League of Legends Tourney

Action RTS/multiplayer online battle arena games like Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, and Heroes of Newerth have earned a reputation for their uncompromising core players. Put that group into an international tournament with cash prizes on the line and then throw in allegations of cheating and rule-bending officials, and you've got some seriously pissed off gamers. That's just what happened at the recent World Cyber Games 2011 League of Legends North American qualifier tournament, and LoL fans and e-Sports players are demanding answers.

GameSpy's email tip line inbox lit up like a Christmas tree yesterday with messages from League of Legends fans, all of them telling much the same tale: at the WCG 2011 LoL qualifier tourney over the weekend (run by the U.S. WCG but with support from Riot Games e-Sports officials) one player, "Jatt," participated in matches for two teams, one officially in the Canadian bracket and the other in the U.S. bracket. According to U.S. WCG tourney rules, that's a no-no, and when other players went to officials to complain, Jatt was disqualified. However, he was only disqualified from his Canadian team -- a team that had already been eliminated -- and allowed to continue playing for his U.S. squad, team Dignitas.

That was but one small bit of scandal at the tourney. According to various messages we received, U.S. WCG officials and Riot Games, including e-Sports manager Matt Marcou, tweaked rules on the fly (including the decision to allow Jatt to continue playing), completely changing the format of the final match to determine which North American team would advance to the finals in Korea.

The accusation: the final match between Team Chicks Dig Elo (CDE) and Team Dignitas (Jatt's squad) was originally set as a best of 3 games. CDE came from the losers bracket, and was thus at a 0 games to 1 disadvantage. However, CDE won two straight games, and celebrated the victory and title of North American LoL champs, again according to the WCG's posted rules for the tournament.

After the match, Dignitas contacted World Cyber Games officials (confirmed by Dignitas team member Voyboy) and Riot Games to ask if the final match should have been a best of three sets not a best of three games, which was the case at the previous WCG LoL Canada tournament. Officials agreed to the change and play continued, this time with team Dignitas earning the 2 sets to 1 victory.

We contacted Riot Games and the World Cyber Games yesterday in hopes getting of their version of events, and if, in fact, rules were changed on the fly during the tournament. Neither responded to our requests for comment.

However, Riot's Marcou has created an LoL forum thread to address the issue, posting a general statement, and then opening the thread for a Q&A. Here's the statement in full:

Summoners,

We'd like to take a moment to address recent events surrounding the WCG qualifiers. We understand why you're upset about how the event has been handled and communicated thus far.

Frustration over this event can be attributed entirely to poor communication of the tournament rules:

As many of you have observed, the rules posted on the official WCG website were inconsistent with the way the WCG was running the qualifiers. The consistent rule set for online WCG tournaments is a double elimination, best of three format (update for clarity: one set in initial round; multiple sets for the final round), and the entire event was run in this fashion. The officially posted rules on the WCG's website incorrectly stated the rules for this event as best of three games. This was the primary reason for the confusion.

Riot works with a variety of eSports organizations, but we do not administer or have oversight of third party tournaments. When players raised this situation to our attention, we consulted with the WCG in an attempt to understand and clarify the situation.

We are still investigating the situation -- as you know, this is fairly complex and there are a lot of moving parts, and we want to make sure we have the full story before commenting further. We have requested the WCG clarify the situation and their rules further, and we'll continue to keep you posted.

We know this hasn't been a great experience for fans of competitive League of Legends. We're not happy about it either, and we're sorry it's taken us a while to communicate to you on this subject.

The WCG 2011 League of Legends finals are set to kick-off on December 8 in Korea. The complete tournament offers a prize pool of more than $600,000. We'll keep you posted with any updates from WCG.

UPDATE: Riot Games contacted GameSpy to stress that the tournament was a WCG-run event and "at no point did Matt Marcou 'suggest' a rule change." PR Manager Chris Heintz added that the studio intends to reach out to the team CGE players impacted.

"We're definitely not happy about the effect this has had on our competitive players, and at a minimum we're going to have a conversation with the players about this," Heintz said. "They're understandably angry, and the community is reacting to their public anger."

"Moving forward, we intend to more closely manage eSports partner relationships in the future to prevent this kind of failure from occurring in the first place."

In addition, the U.S. WCG has issued a statement, apologizing for its "inadequate communication" in regard to the tournament's rules. The organization also officially declared that Team Dignitas is the winner and will appear in the WCG LoL Grand Finals in Korea. The statement in full is below:

WCG USA Community,

The intent of this statement is to address concerns over the League of Legends qualifier in the online US National Finals which recently took place. We understand the source of confusion and frustration, and we'd like to take a brief moment to provide as much clarity as we can.

As we understand it, there are two chief concerns, addressed below:

1. The published rules included a 'series length' provision that was inconsistent with the WCG's intended format for an online League of Legends tournament. This was a miscommunication on the part of the WCG which we sincerely regret, and it stems from the fact that the US National Finals were originally intended to be a live event. The format that was actually used was consistent throughout the entire tournament across all games (double elimination, best of 3 sets). See Final Provisions - Rule #4.

2. There were questions raised about the eligibility of a player with dual American and Canadian citizenship. To clarify: players with dual citizenship can participate in multiple qualifiers, but they can only represent one country in the WCG Grand Final. The WCG does not run citizenship checks until teams are qualified for the WCG Grand Final, and at that point should a player qualify from multiple countries, he/she would represent the first country in which he/she participated in any official WCG competition that year, per WCG regulations.

Both of these concerns stem from inadequate communication, and this has been a lesson we will take to heart. WCG USA values each competitor, and recognizes the hard work it takes to compete on a national and global level. Every ruling and stipulation surrounding the WCG USA tournaments is intended in the spirit of competition and to uphold the integrity of the tournament to ensure that all players have a fair chance to represent team USA at the Grand Finals.

That being said, the team who officially qualified for the WCG Grand Finals is Team Dignitas. We ask that all players please respect the decisions of WCG USA, and wish the qualified team the best of luck in the WCG Grand Finals in December.

Spy Guy says: Our tipline inbox was flooded with messages about this yesterday. We wanted to post this story immediately, but given the accusations, we also wanted to give Riot and WCG ample time to respond to our requests for comment. Disappointing we've yet to hear from either. Hopefully we'll have more detailed info on this story for you soon.